Deaf man cleared of rape after serving sentence

JURISPRUDENCE

Jeff Carlton, Associated Press

Published
4:00 am PDT, Tuesday, September 28, 2010

FILE - In this June 24, 2010 file photo, deaf inmate Stephen Brodie uses sign language to answer a question through an interpreter during a jailhouse interview in Dallas. A judge has set aside the 1993 conviction of Brodie, who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack. The district attorney's office supported 39-year-old Stephen Brodie's claim of innocence during a court hearing in Dallas on Monday Sept. 27, 2010. less

FILE - In this June 24, 2010 file photo, deaf inmate Stephen Brodie uses sign language to answer a question through an interpreter during a jailhouse interview in Dallas. A judge has set aside the 1993 ... more

Photo: LM Otero, AP

Photo: LM Otero, AP

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FILE - In this June 24, 2010 file photo, deaf inmate Stephen Brodie uses sign language to answer a question through an interpreter during a jailhouse interview in Dallas. A judge has set aside the 1993 conviction of Brodie, who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack. The district attorney's office supported 39-year-old Stephen Brodie's claim of innocence during a court hearing in Dallas on Monday Sept. 27, 2010. less

FILE - In this June 24, 2010 file photo, deaf inmate Stephen Brodie uses sign language to answer a question through an interpreter during a jailhouse interview in Dallas. A judge has set aside the 1993 ... more

Photo: LM Otero, AP

Deaf man cleared of rape after serving sentence

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A judge has overturned the 1993 conviction of a deaf man who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack.

Stephen Brodie, 39, dropped his head in relief after an interpreter signed to him that Judge Lena Levario had set aside his conviction Monday on the grounds of actual innocence. He then turned to face the courtroom audience, some of whom waved both hands in the air - sign language for applause.

"I feel like a burden has been lifted," Brodie told reporters through a translator. "I feel light. I feel extremely happy."

The case was reopened after Brodie's father wrote a letter to the office of District Attorney Craig Watkins, who had started a unit dedicated to re-examining possible innocence cases.

Brodie originally was arrested in 1991 for stealing quarters from a vending machine at a community swimming pool. While he was being questioned about that crime, police began asking about the unsolved rape of the 5-year-old girl a year earlier.

Brodie has been deaf since childhood, but police questioned him for hours without an interpreter. He eventually confessed, but later told the Associated Press he felt scared and pressured.

When a judge ruled the confession was admissible at trial, Brodie and his attorney figured a guilty verdict, which was punishable by up to 99 years, was all but certain. So they cut a deal - pleading guilty to assaulting the girl in exchange for a five-year prison sentence. After serving that sentence, Brodie served two more prison stints totaling five more years for twice failing to register as a sex offender.

Michelle Moore, Brodie's current attorney, said Brodie was made a scapegoat because police were under pressure to find the person responsible for a series of more than a dozen sexual assaults of young girls that terrorized the north Dallas area in the early 1990s.

In addition, Brodie was convicted even though a hair and a fingerprint that police believed came from the perpetrator were not a match. Moore said prosecutors failed to notify Brodie's trial attorney that testing showed the hair excluded Brodie as the source.

When Brodie was arrested and convicted, police knew the fingerprint, found on the window through which the perpetrator entered the victim's home, did not match their suspect or anyone living there.

A year after Brodie's conviction, police learned the fingerprint belonged to Robert Warterfield, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 1994.

Warterfield, who is free and working for a yard service, according to the state sex offender registry, was never charged in the attack for which Brodie served time. Watkins said after the hearing that his office is investigating Warterfield and that the statute of limitations has not expired.

Dallas County has exonerated 20 wrongly convicted people in recent years through DNA testing - more than any other county nationally and all but two states. But the Brodie case does not involve DNA. Instead, it is the county's first potential exoneration involving a false confession, Moore said.